Innovation is as critical to payments as oxygen. And in our most recent Commanders in Chief installment, innovation was among the chief points of discussion for Marqeta CTO Tony Ford. As the executive told PYMNTS, tokenization heralds sweeping change across several fronts.

PYMNTS: Speaking specifically of the payments and commerce space, what, in your opinion, is the most impactful innovation in that realm in the last five years?

TF: For payment card issuing, it’s tokenization, bar none. The vision for tokenization and the Internet of Things makes for a secure, frictionless way to add payments to every device that we interact with.

Today it’s our phone and maybe our watch. Tomorrow it’s our cars making payments in a fast food drive thru, a ring on our finger and the wave of our hand to hop on the subway or our refrigerators intelligently ordering more groceries from Instacart.

In the future, we will be living in a world where the payment disappears because it’s ubiquitous and secure, so you don’t have to worry about it.

PYMNTS: What does innovation mean to you?

TF: Innovation needs to speak for itself. It’s about looking at the world as it is and figuring out what else can be done — what else can be better. I don’t want to spend my time taking something someone else built and tweaking it or maintaining it. I want to create something new that solves a problem for someone where there’s significant new value on the other side. At Marqeta, I am grateful that we have been able to invent some really valuable products.

Take what we did with JIT Funding, for example. Marqeta provides modern and open access to payment card issuing, and for the first time companies get the control and insight of an issuer processor without the complexity.

PYMNTS: What does a day in the life of a chief technology officer look like?

TF: As the CTO, I have the opportunity to both lead technology at Marqeta and drive the…